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I haven’t seen this film in a long time, not since I was a little kid. Or Swan Princess for that matter. I should watch them again some time, even if it’s just for nostalgia’s sake since I doubt they both hold up today.

Rob get out of my head! Every time you beat me to the punch. I think the other movie you were reaching for was Osmosis Jones. If not maybe Titan AE.

WB like a lot of studios in the 90s saw the shitton of money Disney hauled in and said, “I’d like some of that.” Warner Bros had an inside track because it was in the midst of acquiring Hanna Barbara so it had animation folks if not feature animation.

I agree, WB choked when it came to closing the deal. If this had been a straight up fantasy without trying to cute-it-up with two headed dragons and talking axe chickens this could have been as subversive as the Princess Bride.

Re: Don Bluth. I agree he is an unappreciated artist. But I think sadly most out grow him. Nihm and Land Before are great for little kids (under the age of 8) but at 12 and above it left me wanting. Did the movie turn bad? No it’s the same as it always has been, but growing up it didn’t fill my cup which grew larger.

I don’t have much to say since I’ve never seen Quest for Camelot. However, my like for Disney ranges from Sleeping Beauty and the princess movies (except for maybe Rapunzel), most Pixar movies, then nothing, and then Wreck It Ralph and I’m starting to like Disney again. I wouldn’t mind seeing Batman during the winter.

One of my favorite reviews! I think Rob and Doug hit this one on the head. Movies like “Quest for Camelot’ happen when you try to apply another person’s formula to your own creativity. I always wished that since Disney did the fairy tales, that Warner Bros. would do American Tall Tale stories like John Henry, Paul Bunyan and the Ghost Train. Maybe doing something for an older demo.

I met one of the animators who worked on the film once, I won’t give out his name, but he talked about, being brought in, and being told about how WB wanted to make something different and more adult and mature a form of animation than Disney, and what happened was that they got hired and everything kept getting watered down and watered down to the point where eventually it became clear that what they really wanted was to make a movie that looked like a Disney film. Anyway, eventually, by the time they were finished, all the animators who felt cheated at this point were calling it “Quest for Crap-A-Lot” is what they had nicknamed it, and, of course, the director, who they didn’t like, they didn’t call it that to him, but this was kinda started as a different project and devolved into a Disney ripoff due to misguided top influences later. So, nobody liked it, nobody liked working on it, it was really kind of a disaster behind the scenes of people who just, maybe wanted to do something else, but couldn’t articulate it or vision it, other than to just make Disney light, as you call it. That’s kinda what I’ve heard happen, that these films, were some disconnect between people wanting to do something different and people who, saw Disney during their second renaissance and couldn’t really see anything else. It was a bit of a mess.

Wow! That is incredibly amazing to hear that. I do admit that this film did lead to rip-offs of Disney films and was one of the main reasons why traditional cel animation died in the 2000’s (Except short films). Thank you for sharing this.

Since you guys are unsure, I’ll go ahead and clear this up — the Swan Princess was created by a studio called Nest Entertainment, which was founded by Richard Rich, who like Don Bluth used to work at Disney (hence the “Non-Disney” aspect of the animation). Rich was best known for having directed The Fox and the Hound and the controversial The Black Cauldron, before he formed Nest. Nest was later bought up by another company after creating nothing but mediocre films (The Swan Princess and its sequels, The Trumpet of the Swan, and another film you reviewed, The King and I), and the new studio created by the juncture, Crest Animation Studios, is the mind behind the Alpha and Omega films.

I forget where I heard this but I remember that Mask of the Phantasm was originally going to be a television movie but then WD decided to give it a theatrical release during production. The resolution shift would have required a big over-hall with everything including the paper/cells they would use to animate.

‘The Dwindling’ As I call it, a period that started right after the Rennasaince with ‘Pochahantas’ and ended with the shutting down of Disney’s handrawn animation division. Good movies did come out during this period (The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Mulan, Lilo & Stich, Treasure Planet, The Princess and the Frog, the Winnie the Pooh reboot) but none of them did very well critically or financially and most of them were mediocre at best.

Yeah, they certainly didn’t have the big successes…well, Lilo and Stitch is the exception. The movie actually was critical acclaimed and did very well in the box office.
But I actually think that the last two movies of the Renaissance era, Mulan and Tarzan, were very strong and they both did well. Not Lion King numbers, but a decent amount of money.

And “The Emperor’s New Groove”. Jeez, Disney at their low point did a better job of making a movie that feels like a full-length Warner Bros. movie than Warner Bros. ever did! But it’s like Doug said, Warner Bros.’ strength, when they were at their peak with stuff like the Chuck Jones cartoons, was doing more with less, and Disney managed to do the same.

No offense Doug but I kinda like it better when you do vlogs on your own, without Rob. No that I don’t like Rob, I do it’s just…. he kinda gets in the way at times and most of the time you two just argue rather then accurately review what you’re suppose to review

I actually like the interation between the two and as Rob is the man behind the camera his opinions are a bit mysterious and more interesting. Doug is much less mysterious; I always think of the Nostalgia Critic as Doug’s Mr Hyde so their opinions aren’t going to differ too much. I have yet to see a movie Doug liked and the NC hated or vice versa (Unlike Cinema Snob where the Cinema Snob hated Caligula but Brad thinks it’s the greatest movie ever made).

Swan princess is not a Warner bros production. It was one of those countless smaller productions which happened back in the time which is one of the reason I am ready to forgive the movie a lot. Because there is at least some effort put into it and compared with other productions on this level it is actually pretty good in that it is at least better than some of Disney’s worst movies.

Yes, Don Bluth used to work for Disney. He left during the production of Fox and the Hound.

Warner Bros actually did manage to do one truly successful animated movie in terms of box office. It’s called The Lego Movie.

I actually saw Mask of the Phantasm in theaters so there you go. I was obsessed with the animated series, but I don’t remember liking the movie all that much for some reason. I think it had to do with the true identity of the Phantasm or something, because I thought he was really bad ass and was disappointed when the movie revealed he was not “real”? I can’t remember what the twist was honestly. but yeah.

I don’t know how but I was given the soundtrack before I heard about the movie. Back then I thought it was brilliant. I know people mention the really big names Andrea Bocelli/ Celine Dion, LeaAnne Rimes, and Bryan White, but it was pretty huge to have the Corrs in the soundtrack, and STEVE PERRY!! Even back then I knew who STEVE PERRY was and loved his version of I stand alone. Celtic was pretty big for awhile when it came out… long, pointless story of how I know that.
After memorizing the soundtrack I couldn’t wait to see the movie… and didn’t want it to be over because I kept waiting for it to get more interesting. Lol. I TRIED liking it. I agree, with the plot it could’ve been more. It was too vanilla. For a story about white people… baha.

Also, as a former animation student who went to a school where actual animators were part time teachers, I can confirm that it’s true about the half assed-ness. Either they were disgruntled because they were let go from Disney and worked at WB, etc, or they were fairly new into the field, worked with some other animation studio and their fairytale dream was working at Disney. The animator’s circle of life, I guess. Wish I still kept up with it, though. For now I’m just a goob who can tell you all about animated movies. Yay.

Seeing WB’s attempts at competing with Disney makes me really wish they had tried to get into feature-length cartoons when Chuck Jones was still around, instead of bailing on animation when making shorts stopped being profitable. The closest thing I’ve seen to what I’d expect to come out of that was “The Emperor’s New Groove”, which was a Disney movie!

Yeah, so, went back to watch Doug’s original review of this piece of crap. Nice to see him perving on a potential lesbian scene where one girl rescues another. Because straight guys perving on lesbians isn’t a bit sexist, or insulting and denigrating to actual lesbian affection, nor does it make the guy doing it look like a drooling, juvenile moron. Keep up the good work, Doug!

Here’s something that I failed to understand: the dragons couldn’t breathe fire. They finally do when fighting the griffin… but they just unleash one breath and roast the griffin to a crisp… That’s it. No build up, no aerial fight scene, nothing… They managed to fly together, but breathing fire just… happened…

For goodness sake, why not have the griffin being threatening and almost on the verge of KILLING the dragons, until they breathe fire to FEND the griffin off? After that, the tide turns and they breathe fire until they hit the griffin and defeat it for good. The dragons are supposed to be cowards… at least one half of it. How come that wasn’t used??? Hey, how about making the griffin more mecaning, like by having it fall into the mutating pool with a balista and have it change into a giant flying crossbow hybrid? Shit man, this could have been nice to break the dragons’ shells. They’re GODDAMNED dragons, come on now >:(

Oh, one more thing… CÉLINE DION, the greatest diva in the world (courtesy of Québec, Canada), SANG a song in that movie… no f!@#$%?&* joke O_O

Yeah, and Exaclibur NOT curing Garrett’s blindness was just dumb… and I mean DUMB ¬_¬;

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